The lady came in, cool, pale, and venomous as ever. "Amuse Mr.
Hartright, my angel," said the Count. He placed a chair for her,
kissed her hand for the second time, withdrew to a sofa, and, in
three minutes, was as peacefully and happily asleep as the most
virtuous man in existence.
Madame Fosco took a book from the table, sat down, and looked at
me, with the steady vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot
and never forgave.
"I have been listening to your conversation with my husband," she
said. "If I had been in HIS place--I would have laid you dead on
the hearthrug."
With those words she opened her book, and never looked at me or
spoke to me from that time till the time when her husband woke.
He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa, accurately to an hour
from the time when he had gone to sleep.
"I feel infinitely refreshed," he remarked. "Eleanor, my good
wife, are you all ready upstairs? That is well. My little packing
here can be completed in ten minutes--my travelling-dress assumed
in ten minutes more. What remains before the agent comes?" He
looked about the room, and noticed the cage with his white mice in
it. "Ah!" he cried piteously, "a last laceration of my sympathies
still remains.
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